Angels With Stethoscopes

wonderfully accurate and telling book:
this book is short ,easy to read and well worth the effort .this was my firsy book of t his author it is well done and very poignant .

Angel's with Stethoscopes is a treasure:
When Susi Franco left her husband, she and her six children immediately fled to the safety of my home. After we had bedded down our combination of nine children, Susi told me of her plan to fulfill her lifetime ambition - to take her family to West VA and attend nursing school. She faced tough obstacles along the way, but she triumphed with confidence and grace. Angels with Stethoscopes is a powerful nonfiction work that follows Susi's journey and her observations of the ongoing challenges of a registered nurse. Her inspirational stories are engaging, sad, honest and uplifting. The reader is empathetically drawn into the sweetness of the elderly gentleman's playful flirting, the heartbreaking redolent death watch over the young accident victim who succumbs to his injuries, and the dark paradox of her own daughter's near fatal accident, when Susi experienced both the reassuring familiarity of her own turf (the hospital ER), while at the same time being rendered helpless as a parent. All of this is delicately and honestly portrayed in true Dickensian fashion with her beautiful prose,humor and poetic touch. In Angels with Stethoscopes, Susi Franco is truly the angel. By tracing her feelings as a competent and compassionate professional nurse, Susi demonstrates not only the spirit of the nursing profession but the strength and beauty of her own true spirit as well. It is a lyrical, poetic and a meaningful story; I highly recommend it!

A Nurse's Journey:
Reviewed by Marcy Burns for Reader Views (11/06) This amazing book will touch the reader's heart, sometimes near to breaking. Have you ever wondered how nurses cope day after day with the pain that their patients endure? They can provide the most competent care, but still many of their patients will suffer and some will die. They can do what they must do with steely discipline, and they can resolve to be indifferent. Still, the best of them, those who are "Angels with Stethoscopes" remain compassionate and caring and inevitably they, too, suffer. Susi Franco is surely among the best. Her poetry, in an astonishingly effective mix with prose, at times is a lament, at times a tender love song, and at times a despairing wail. The words grab you and take you into the dreaded world of dying and death. They do not spare the horrors and the ugliness, the blood and panic and fear, but they speak, too, of hope and healing and understanding. When her own daughter is gravely injured, Susi Franco at once knows too much and can do too little. She navigates the impossible path of "Mother who is a nurse" sometimes with courage and sometimes with helpless grief. She does not spare herself in the words that take you along on that journey. This is a remarkable, beautifully written book. Its impact on the reader cannot be captured in any single excerpt, but consider the following: The passing of a life is a time to Be somber. Looking at him there in the bed, Unshaven Dirty Sharp bones barely covered with flesh The smell of death oozing from him It is difficult to imagine What kind of life he lived. I do not include the entire poem, but I wish that I could. It is that tender and loving. "Angels with Stethoscopes" is a book for anyone, everyone. Read it. You will be richer.

A "Must Read" for Everyone:
Susi Franco has done a superb job of providing a "nurses-eye" view of patient care. Anyone who has ever been a patient or has had anyone in their life as a patient or who may become one themselves, should read this compelling compilation of the personal experiences of a dedicated nurse. All nurses or hope-to-be nurses will find this book an inspiration and help them set goals for themselves. In this book they will find humor, raw reality, courage, and commitment. As one who taught nurses for nearly forty years, I wish this book had been available for my students. The book will bring laughter, tears, and reality to the reader.

Wasn't what I thought it would be!:
Assuming by the title name of this book, I thought I would be getting a book about nursing, in a story format. When the book arrived, I was saddened to see the book was poetry. I would have not ordered if I had known this when I ordered. I, of course, claim my own resposibility in the purchase and I should have investigated more before I ordered.